Meringue looks fluffy and beautiful but is very delicate and can crumble easily. The Meringue Test is when we test whether something that looks solid and stable but is actually fragile and delicate.
As professionals, our ‘years of experience’ can cause us to fail the Meringue Test….meaning that we have years of experience doing something, but do not necessarily have experience doing it well, or doing it in ways that keep up with the evolution of our profession. Examples of professionals failing the Meringue Test would be a mechanic not knowing how to service a fuel-injected engine, or a roofer not knowing the latest hurricane roofing code, or an accountant not being proficient in QuickBooks Online.
Here’s the sucky part.
We don’t fail the Meringue Test all at once. Instead, we have success, or we get comfortable, or we get lazy, or, what seems most likely, we get too busy to keep up. As a result, our capabilities slowly atrophy until our “experience” masks our lack of real, contextual capability. And seemingly, all of a sudden, we are meringue…we look solid and capable, but when tested by the complexities and pressures of GovCon, our skills don’t hold up.
If we don’t maintain our skills through consistent, experience-based training, then our GovCon capabilities can become a meringue, appearing strong, but are actually quite fragile when exposed to the complexities of GovCon. We fail the Meringue Test.
So how do we keep from failing the Meringue Test? How do we stay generally sharp without having to take hours and hours of formal training?
By using a variety of shorter, more focused training sessions that allow us to maintain our Functional GovCon Fitness. Functional GovCon Fitness is like the “functional physical fitness” many of us use to stay healthy, such as platforms and communities like CrossFit, Planet Fitness and even Peloton. These platforms focus on functionality, variety, and consistency to maintain functional fitness. We can maintain our Functional GovCon Fitness (FGF) with these same elements. At Skyway Acquisition, we use these same elements as we support our clients.
Functionality: our team of 10 former Contracting Officers delivers functional consulting and training based on both regulation and our actual, contextual experience from both sides of GovCon.
Variety: Our diverse team has current expertise in a variety of GovCon areas because we live in GovCon every day. Our consulting and training cover the entire acquisition process, throughout all the Acquisition Time Zones® and Execution Time Zones®. Our Core Value #4 is Solving Unique Puzzles.
Consistency: We have delivered new, current and updated resources for our clients every week, week after week, for well over a decade.
At Skyway Acquisition, we believe that everyone needs Functional GovCon Fitness to #DoGovConWell. Whether you’re looking to obtain or maintain your FGF, we’d love to help you.
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